Palm bubble bursts, as consumers fail to buy into Pre and Pixi

The PalmPre was supposed to be the company's knight in shining armour, but it looks like after the initial wave of excitement from the US, consumers have failed to embrace the phone with the same gusto.

Palm has issued a statement which says that earnings are unlikely to be as good as it thought they would be. The cause of the miscalculation? In Palm's words:

"Revenues for the quarter and full year are being impacted by slower than expected consumer adoption of the company’s products".

In "you and I speak" that means people just aren't buying the Palm Pre and the Palm Pixi.

“Palm webOS is recognized as a groundbreaking platform that enables one of the best smartphone experiences available today, and our work to evolve the platform and bring industry-leading technology to market continues. However, driving broad consumer adoption of Palm products is taking longer than we anticipated”, said Jon Rubinstein, chairman and chief executive officer.

Palm, who was struggling to survive in the tough world of smartphones before it launched the Palm Pre has said that it will be announcing its latest earnings report on 18 March.